Wedding dress keepsake bears are a lovely way to use your wedding dress and have something to remind you of your special day. I really love making them as they are always very different, according to the dress I am using.

Some are very plain so you need to use the best bits of the dress.

Some are heavily beaded, which means the bear can take twice as long to make due to the beading having to be un picked and hand sewn back on.

Some dresses are very lacy, which means they gave to be backed and lined so it reinforces the fabric.

I was asked to make three Remembrance Bears recently using two waistcoats.

The bears were to be wearing mini waistcoats. There wasn't going to be enough fabric from the waistcoats to make the bears out of it so I decided to make fluffy traditional bears. A bit out of my comfort zone.

Anyway, I decided to use a brown fleecy fabric for the bear body, and the waistcoat fabric for the paw pads and feet.

A different nose was needed for these bears, so I attempted to sew the traditional noses instead of the way I normally do them.

This was a quote from a customer recently who was absolutely right. Each bear does have a story, especially Remembrance Bears. Made from sentimental clothing, they can help through the grief of loosing a loved one.

Of course its lovely to make bears using baby clothes and even Wedding dress bears, but somehow, Remembrance bears are that little bit more special, and I love making them.

I recently made a bear for a lovely lady. Her Nanny had just passed away and she asked me to make two special Remembrance bears for her using Nanny's clothes.

Thank you to everyone who entered my first official Giveaway. Sorry about the problems with posting to my blog and actually entering. I will probably run it from another giveaway site next time!

I would like to take this opportunity to say Thank You to everyone who has supported Bowman Bears since I started in Jan 2012. I love what I do and I'm so glad that I can do it. Without people who support Bowman Bears I wouldn't be able to do it, so Thank you.

Have you ever wondered what to do with your lovely wedding dress after the wedding? I did. I loved mine and was very sad that it was up in the loft, not being seen. Wedding dresses are probably the most expensive dress we women will ever own and It's difficult knowing you will probably never wear it again after the wedding. I thought about turning my own dress into a Keepsake Wedding Bear, and Im so glad I did.

The first cut was hard, but after that it was fine. My dress had lots of sparkles and beads and wanted to incorporate them into my bear, so I had to use sections from all over the dress.

Hi all, well I have completed my first bear attached to her base and I am really pleased with it. I have had good feedback, and some people have said that a square base would work better, I agree, so I can do either, square or oval. Square would sit better on a shelf as someone stated, which is very true.

Here she is.

She is sitting on a plywood base, painted pale pink with wooden letters painted cream.

I can pretty much paint them any colour, but for now I have bought pink, blue and cream as most of the bears I make are a mixture of these colours.

As most of you will know, I have always made and sold my bears as Keepsake Bears so they are display items. However, they do have an appeal to children. (Naturally) Now, the tricky thing was how to be able to sell and make my keepsake bears legally? They couldn't be CE marked due to the material that was being used. And I was advised that the only truly safe way of testing one of my bears was to have it tested at a testing house. Which wasn't possible in this circumstance.

So, today I am very excited as I have had the ok from Kingston Borough council Trading Standards that the way I have place my bears on stands is sufficient to be classed as a display item.